Friday, October 24, 2008

This ALL In One version of Pendrivelinux 2008 can be run from a USB thumbdrive either natively (as a stand alone Operating System at boot), or within Windows using qemu emulation. Moreover, the user can save installed software, changes, bookmarks, email, contacts and more automatically via a persistent loop image and then restore those changes upon subsequent qemu or native boots. This is a major breakthrough as the user can now run Pendrivelinux 2008 from a USB device even if the computer cannot natively boot from USB and still save changes persistently to be restored regardless of whether booting natively or from qemu.

Kudo's goes out to Gerardo Nevarez for the preparation of initrd.gz to make both Native and Qemu Pendrivelinux 2008 boot processes possible while running persistently.

Warnings:

* Do not attempt to use the USB drive while running Pendrivelinux via Qemu or you will corrupt the filesystem. * By default, Pendrivelinux will setup user networking, so that you can mount shares on the host computer by pointing to smb://10.0.2.2. You have to set the network card to use DHCP.

For Native boot, reboot your computer and set your boot menu or BIOS to boot from the USB thumbdrive, save your settings and continue to boot

For Qemu boot, simply launch qemu.bat from the USB thumbdrive and Pendrivelinux will launch within Windows. However, please note that this does NOT work in Vista yet!

Login and passwords:

User: root password: root

User: guest password: guest

Additional notes: A loopfile with a capacity of 256MB has already been created on the USB flash device. If you would like to use a larger loopfile for saving changes, boot using the Boot Live (non persistent) option. Then delete the mcnlive.loop file on your flash drive and create a new VFAT loopfile by clicking the Penguin in the Taskbar and navigating to Pendrivelinux-> Create persistent loop and following the onscreen instructions.

The Remaster Live script used to create Pendrivelinux is included in the download as is seen in the screenshot above, just before the Create persistent loop entry.This remaster was made from MCNLive and is based on the free Mandriva Linux distribution "without changing the source". Sources are available from ftp.nluug.nl and distrib-coffee or from one of the mirrors.

Ubuntu 8.10 USB Live installation from Windows: This simple tutorial covers how to install, boot and then run Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) from a USB flash drive. Upon completion of this simple tutorial, Ubuntu 8.10 can be run from the portable flash device in the same fashion (but much faster) than it would from the Live CD. This specific tutorial does not cover a Ubuntu 8.10 persistence (persistent) feature option. Hence the user cannot save changes back to the USB device using this tutorial.

Note: This is a QuicknEasy USB Ubuntu 8.10 install. Once finished, the installation will act just like the Live CD. No changes are saved back to the USB stick.

USB Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Desktop:

USB Ubuntu 8.10 creation essentials:

Windows PC to perform conversion

Ubuntu 8.10 ISO (the script can download it)

1GB or larger USB flash drive

UB810.exe (contains the files to do the conversion)

HP USB format tool (to format and make the flash drive active)

Easy Ubuntu 8.10 USB flash drive installation tutorial:

Download the HP USB format tool and format your stick using a Fat32 file system

Download the Ubuntu 8.10 ISO and place it in the Ubuntu810 folder. This step is optional, the script will attempt to download the ISO if it is not present

From the Ubuntu810 folder, click Ubuntu810.bat and follow the onscreen instructions

Once the script has finished, restart your PC and set your BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device, save your changes and reboot

If all goes well, you should now be booting from a Live USB version of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ipex.

Known issues: Upon boot from the USB device, you may encounter two messages stating "Unknown keyword in syslinux.cfg". This is because the standard syslinux does not ship with the gfxboot hack. The system should still boot as it would from the Live CD, with the exception that language selection will not be presented.

Ubuntu 8.10 Persistent flash drive install using the Live CD. This tutorial will enable a user to install Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex to a USB flash drive while booted from the Live CD. In addition the persistence or casper persistent feature will be utilized to automatically save changes back to the thumb drive as you work, and then restore those saved changes upon subsequent boots.

Create Ubuntu 8.10 flash drive manually

Now type fdisk -l to list available drives/partitions (note which device is your flash drive Example: /dev/sdb). Throughout this tutorial, replace all instances of x with your flash drive letter. For example, if your flash drive is sdb, replace x with b.

Type umount /dev/sdx1

Type fdisk /dev/sdx

type p to show the existing partition and d to delete it

type p again to show any remaining partitions (if partitions exist, repeat the previous step)

This tutorial covers the process of installing Xubuntu 8.04.1 to a USB flash drive from within a running (Ubuntu) Linux environment. Xubuntu uses the xfce desktop environment as opposed to Gnome or KDE. Xfce helps Xubuntu run smoother and quicker on older and slower PC's. In addition, this installation tutorial utilizes the casper persistence feature to enable changes to be saved and restored on subsequent boots. If you have access to a working Ubuntu Linux installation and your system does not have a CD drive, this tutorial is for you.